Ů��С��Ƶ

“Fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.” That’s what US President Donald Trump on North Korea if it made “any more threats” to the US.

Earlier that day, North Korea’s military had put the Pacific island of Guam – a US territory that hosts US airbases – on alert with the provocative statement that it was “carefully examining the operational plan for making an .”

The exchange has caused many to fear that the US president is pushing the situation towards nuclear war. The reality is much more complicated.

The threat that started the whole affair didn’t come out of nowhere. Every year, Pyongyang protests the annual joint military exercise conducted by the US, South Korea, and Japan, simulating a nuclear strike against North Korea.

Sure enough, shortly before the threat to Guam, a B-1B – an American bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons – had once again flown from Guam to near North Korean airspace.

Credible threat

Previously, the North Korean protests elicited less aggressive responses. The difference this year was that Kim Jong-un might have a credible nuclear threat to back up his bluster. In a July report, the US Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that North Korea really has reduced the size of its nuclear devices enough to .

Can it hit Guam? That’s an open question – the small island is 3400 kilometres away, of the single-stage Hwasong 12 missile North Korea first tested last May, and says it plans to . Weapons experts think it needs more tests before it can reliably deliver a nuclear device. The threat’s careful wording suggest North Korea understands that. “Enveloping fire in the areas around Guam” does not quite equal hitting the island, or necessarily a nuclear strike.

More to the point, does North Korea want to nuke Guam? Experts are doubtful. “Nothing suggests Kim Jong-un is insane,” says of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank in Washington DC. His main motive is to preserve his own power. “Nuking US territory would invite massive retaliation,” he says, aimed at regime-change – the one thing Kim doesn’t want.

So what is North Korea proposing? This week’s language allows for a conventional payload. A warning shot, in other words.

Indeed, Lewis thinks the reason Kim wants nuclear missiles in the first place is not to strike first, but to deter a first strike by the US.

Unfortunately, that’s where Trump complicates things.

Bolstering support

Trump’s threat of a response “such as the world has never seen before” seems to imply a nuclear strike by the US. But that, too, may be reading too much into in a wide range of situations.

“Nobody seriously believes that a pre-emptive military strike against North Korea might be successful,” says Pavel Podvig of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva.

Instead, some fear that with his political situation at home worsening, Trump could pick fights abroad to bolster domestic support. But that is dangerous, because the situation could easily escalate. “I’m afraid Trump will say something the North Koreans will interpret as a sign an attack is coming, and they’ll over-react,” says of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California.

The stand-off could also drive regional powers such as Japan to boost defences, perhaps even going nuclear, making the region more of a tinderbox than it is already.

So far, it’s all just words, but experts fear that amid mounting rhetoric, and without real diplomatic negotiation, someone may push too hard.

What to do? The only answer, says Lewis, is to stop insisting Kim abandon his nukes, as the US has for years, before starting serious talks. North Korea must be dealt with as a nuclear power, he argues, and brought within the web of mutual deterrence that constrained the last impoverished Asian dictatorship to succeed in going nuclear: 1960s China.